The Rural Alberta Advantage have been a favourite for some time, with 2008’s Hometowns and 2011’s Departures still getting played on a regular basis. Part lovelorn folk act, part boisterous rock band, the trio have carved out a niche that straddles some of my favourite things in music.
It was, therefore, a joy to find new that album, Mended With Gold, doesn’t see any drastic changes. The palpable energy, the Canadian imagery and the earnest lyrics all are still very much a feature of RAA’s make-up, and reviewers and bloggers will be pleased to note that they can still cite Neutral Milk Hotel as a major influence (a common [lazy?] trope in RAA reviews, something which probably stems from the similarities between Nils Edenloff and Jeff Mangum’s nasal delivery).
The story behind the album is a pretty interesting one, with Edenloff writing at least part of it while up in the wilderness of the Bruce Peninsula. As he explains on their website: “Locals told me to watch out for black bears, the heat wasn’t working and at night it sounded like the cottage was surrounded by wolves. I slept with a pocket knife at arms-reach. It’s funny the lines that will run through your head when you’re alone like that and trying to get yourself to sleep.”
Opener ‘Our Love…’ is an archetypal example of what makes RAA good. A fairly riotous song, the opening refrain of ‘our love will burn it down’ is followed by an explosion of guitars and drums that drive the tempo up. Just when you think you have the song pegged as a lively little number, there’s a drastic change around the two minute mark. The instruments fall away and the song opens up so that it becomes flat and wide and lonely, leaving Edenloff to shout his words across an empty landscape as if he’s the only man in the world. ‘On the Rocks’ does this in reverse, with the relatively restrained flow interupted by moments of raw feeling. Maybe this is the Bruce Peninsula coming out onto the record, a juxtaposition of beauty and violence (or at least the imagining of it).
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This is where The Rural Alberta Advantage have always been strong, and where Mended With Gold triumphs. The band have perfected the use of silence and space within songs, dropping pockets of quiet into their rock songs and peppering the slower numbers with abrupt moments of noise and fury. As a result, this is not an album that you find yourself drifting through. The contrasting sensations of loud and quiet, energy and melancholy, sadness and joy (etc. etc.) are constantly played off against one another, and your brain is jolted upon every switch. Kernels of lonliness are unveiled in the hearts of the upbeat songs, while the slow, sad tracks contain an anger or panic that makes the suffering seem real, leaving no song easily labelled as any one thing. This variety of emotions bring into relief the complicated underlying feeling (the proverbial Human Condition, if you will) that makes the record so relatable.
You can order Mended With Gold from Saddle Creek. What are you waiting for?